When Bob Lobel visited The Stadium last fall, he was looking for a story on the Harvard football squad.

But Neil Sheehy was convinced the local television sportscaster was looking for none other than Neil Sheehy. After all, that's what his Harvard hockey teammates had told him.

So the Crimson's senior defenseman quickly introduced himself, and asked Lobel when he would like the interview. Lobel quickly introduced himself and asked Sheehy if he wasn't just a little crazy.

"I've never seen anyone with such a red face." Tony Visone recalls of Sheehy.

But the International Falls, Minn. native hasn't been the butt of too many of his teammate's jokes lately. At 6-ft., 2-in and 210 Ibs. Sheehy has made sure by throwing his weight around all season long. And as both teammates and opponents have learned. Sheehy means business.

Because Neil Sheehy--or "Mclonhead," if you will--is Harvard's "enforcer" on the ice.

As the Crimson's largest skater, the team often looks to Sheehy to stop its usually larger opposition.

"Neil knows he's got to be a sort of enforcer out there," says Mitch Olson, who skates on the team's second defensive shift with Sheehy. "He uses his size very well and that's one of the reasons we've been playing so well."

But it hasn't been an easy road to the top for one of the Crimson's few big hitters. On a team filled with more flashy defensemen. Sheehy has often found himself unnoticed, with the spotlight shining on Mark Fusco, Ken Code and Olson.

Through his aggressive style of play and his steady defensive work. Sheehy has quietly emerged as one of the key reasons this year's Crimson squad remains involved in a mad race for its first-ever NCAA championship.

"When he came to Harvard, he came as a forward," Crimson Coach Bill Cleary says. "But we agreed to move him back and what he's done ever since speaks for itself. He's developed into a great hockey player."

Dubbed "Melonhead" by his teammates because of one pre-game warmup that involved jumping up and down and hitting his head against the ceiling in the locker room, and, as Olson says, "because he's a little slow," Sheehy doesn't quite see himself as the squad's "big bruiser."

"I like to hit, but not just for the sake of hitting," the soft-spoken Sheehy says. "My whole purpose of hitting someone is to take him out of the play. Now, if I have a chance to rail someone, I'll do it."

"I'd like to consider myself more a finesse player, someone just trying to get the puck up to the front line," adds Sheehy, an All-Ivy Honorable-Mention selection last year.

Regardless of how Sheehy, the nephew of Bronco Nagurski of NFL fame, perceives himself, he nevertheless remains the odd person out on a team characterized by its small size and its emphasis on skating over body-checking.